Original practice · fully worked
Original variant: coating maintenance percentile
A protective coating has an exponentially distributed service life with mean 4 months. A maintenance team replaces the coating at 6 months if it has not already failed. The 6-month mark is approximately what percentile of the service-life distribution?
- A
22.3rd - B
39.3rd - C
77.7th - D
86.5th - E
95.0th
Answer and calculation
Standardizing 6 months by the 4-month mean gives 1.5. The exponential CDF is 1 − exp(−1.5) = 0.77687, so 6 months is about the 77.7th percentile.
Setup
Setup
Use the exponential CDF with the stated mean as its scale.
F(x)=1−e−x/4 Model
Model
A percentile rank is 100 times the cumulative probability at the specified service life.
k=100F(6) Compute
Compute
Evaluate the standardized time and the corresponding cumulative probability.
F(6)=1−e−6/4=1−e−1.5 F(6)=0.7768698399… Answer
Answer
The nearest percentile is listed under C.
77.7th percentile(C)